Classics in Short No.16: Mistress Masham’s Repose
Not ‘The Borrowers’ or ‘Honey I Shrank the Kids’? Then it must be…
Mistress Masham’s Repose
Origins
As is well known, Lemuel Gulliver returned from Biefuscu on board a merchantman commanded by Capt. John Biddel, to whom he disclosed something of his adventures. Biddel however shrewdly noted the latitude of the Lilliput archipelago and returned there in order to bring back a collection of the miniature inhabitants. His scheme for showing them at fairgrounds came to naught when they managed to escape from him and they ended up as a secret community dwelling in an island pavilion known as Mistress Masham’s Repose in the grounds of Malplaquet House, Northants. (Lady Masham was a woman of the bedchamber to Queen Anne and was on very friendly terms with Capt. Gulliver’s acquaintance, Jonathan Swift.) In their retreat, the Lilliputians established a workable economy for themselves which lasted until they were discovered by ten-year-old Maria, circa 1944, the subject of this present work.
What happened then
Maria, the orphaned heir to crumbling Malplaquet, is persecuted by her governess, Miss Brown, and by the vicar, Mr Hater, who have designs on her inheritance. Her allies are the cook and the Professor, an indigent scholar inhabiting a cottage on the estate along with all the necessities for studying 12th-century Latin manuscripts. Maria’s discovery of the Lilliputians brings trouble first to herself, since she fails to respect their civilised ways, and second to everyone else when the vicar and Miss Brown discover the secret. Resolution, intelligence, and the farcical involvement of a Lord Lieutenant ex machina bring victory to the forces of righteousness while the Lilliputian band strikes up with ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’.
The historian of these events
T.H. White (1906-1964) was the child of a catastrophic marriage and was forever and always His Own Man. After taking a first in the English tripos at Cambridge he taught for a while at Stowe (which supplied much of the topography of Malplaquet) before launching out on a wayward career as huntsman, falconer, flier, fisherman, handyman, dog-lover, and totally professional writer (who also happened to translate a 12th-century Latin bestiary). Fame, and eventually wealth, came to him through The Sword in the Stone (1938), the first volume of his ‘Malory tetralogy’, and Mistress Masham runs that book close in its highly individual craftsmanship.
Publication
Mistress Masham’s Repose was mostly written in County Mayo where White (inadvertently? intentionally? accidentally?) spent the years of the Second World War. It was first published in the USA, with illustrations by Fritz Eichenberg, in 1946 when it earned White much money by being chosen as Book of the Month. It was published in England a year later by Jonathan Cape – an economy edition without illustrations. The book was dedicated to Amaryllis Virginia Garnett, David Garnett’s first daughter by his second wife, Angelica, née Bell. Amaryllis was three years old at the time.
A neglected classic
Mistress Masham’s Repose had been out of print for some time until the Antique Collectors Club, based at Woodbridge, Suffolk, brought out a new edition, illustrated by Martin Hargreaves, in their series of ‘Children’s Classics’. Although the gaudy pictures do the book no favours, it would be churlish not to welcome the publisher’s confidence in listing the book as one for children. (Even Kaye Webb had her doubts, for her Penguin edition found its way into the ‘Peacock’ series for adolescents rather than into ‘Puffins’.) But there is plenty of evidence that White intended the book for children. He argues the point in some of his letters to David Garnett, while Amaryllis, whether three years old or not, is several times directly addressed by the storyteller within the pages of the book. And the narrative has everything that one could wish for in revealing to children the vivid potential of storytelling in print: pell-mell adventure, dramatic tension, caricature and farce played out beyond the narrow confines that are now regarded as ‘relevant’ and given a language which can attune their ears to a conversation more engrossing than that found in the usual ‘suitable’ works. (It is wonderful to read aloud.) White had great faith in the limitless capacities of children, rightly encouraged. One of his ‘least promising’ sixth-form pupils at Stowe recalled the excitement with which he instilled upon the class Aristotle’s Poetics, Longinus and Quintilian, I.A. Richards’s Practical Criticism, and even The Meaning of Meaning. Are such texts commended today in the New Curriculum?
The illustrations by Martin Hargreaves are taken from the Antique Collectors Club ‘Children’s Classics’ edition, 1 85149 700 5, £12.99 hbk.
Brian Alderson is Chair of the Children’s Books History Society and the chief children’s book consultant for The Times.
